Remember Whirinaki Forest? Post-baby boomers may not. Situated on the south-western corner of Te Urewera National Park, its magnifi­cent groves of podocarps are not generally well-known. Older readers, however, (like me) may have vivid memories of Whirinaki. It was one of a handful of forests that captured the public’s imagination in the 1970s and early 80s. These were years when the future of New Zealand’s native forests became a hot topic. In the mid-70s the New Zealand Forest Service made plans to selectively log Whirinaki. But they had not reck­oned on a new generation of conser­vationists. Almost overnight, seclud­ed Whirinaki—and the tiny logging township of Minginui—were thrust into the national spotlight. Battlelines were drawn: jobs versus trees; red­necks versus greenies; locals versus townies. These were familiar themes for the times. But nowhere were they more intense than at Whirinaki.
In the end the tree-lovers won. The logging stopped at Whirinaki­ as it did in other forests. The new Labour government was in a reform­ing mood. By the end of its first term in office, it had created a whole new government department to man­age native forests (the Department of Conservation, DOC). And in the same year it gave permanent protec­tion to Whirinaki, as the Whirinaki Forest Park.
That was 20 years ago. But what of Whirinaki now? As one who believed passionately in the cause to “save Whirinaki”, it was a question I had often asked myself over the years. Now that Whirinaki was no longer making the national headlines, had it become just another neglected forest, preserved in name only?
And what of the people of the area—the sawmillers of Minginui, the people of Ngati Whare and Ngati Manawa? Had the promised benefits of eco-tourism been delivered to them? Or had it amounted to little more than sawdust in the Christmas stockings? I decided it was time to go to Whirinaki and find out.
The robin that greeted me as I entered the forest was a good omen. My guides for the day, Rod Warne and Gareth Boyt from DOC’s bio­diversity team, had attracted it over to us. Robins, I was informed, were being used as indicator species for fledging success at Whirinaki.
Birds in Whirinaki? There are many, including threatened species such as kiwi, kaka, kakariki and whio (blue duck). But as with almost all mainland forests, a state of siege exists. The bad guys of the for­est—introduced mammals, like rats, possums and stoats—threaten on all sides. This was one of my fears: that Whirinaki, overrun with pests, would be largely devoid of the native birdlife it once supported.
Not so. The robin we were courting was one of many. It was living in a part of the forest that was inten­sively managed by DOC to keep all mammalian pests to very low numbers. Sufficiently low to raise the breeding success rate of the robins up from a paltry 5 per cent to the current 80–90 per cent.
The distant calls of kakariki were a reminder that other birds are also benefiting from intensive pest con­trol. Along with the kakariki, kaka and kereru numbers are up signifi­cantly in Whirinaki after decades of decline.
Even more obvious were the benefits to the plant community. Re­generation was so prolific, it was dif­ficult to believe that in some places we were walking past old logging tracks. Fushias, large-leaved copros­mas, pate and a startling diversity of ground ferns filled the understory. It was a lushness that I had not expected. But it was compelling evi­dence that DOC’s efforts to control voracious herbivores—like possums and deer—have been successful.
Impressive too are the number of threatened plants that are found in Whirinaki. These include Turn­er’s kohuhu (Pittosporum turneri), Dactylanthus taylori, and numerous orchids and mistletoes. Luckily for them, possum control at Whirinaki has so far been pushed out to cover over 20,000 hectares.
Yet even the treasures on the forest floor were not enough to stop me gazing skywards. The urge was irre­sistible. Above, and around me, stood the Famous Five—the five giant po­docarps that is—miro, matai, totara, rimu and kahikatea. These were the trees I’d come to see, and it’s hard not to be moved by their presence. They grow together at Whirinaki as tall and as dense as any podocarp forest you will find; only Pureora on the western side of Taupo comes close.
They are old trees. Most are 400– 600 years old, growing in profusion on a thick bed of pumice and ash, built up over 40,000 years. Once, not so long ago, kokako and huia would have danced in their lofty branches. Perhaps some of them, when they were saplings, were browsed by moa. Yet like all podo­carps, their lineage is even older. To walk in the forests of Whirinaki is, in the famous words of David Bellamy, to walk in a “dinosaur forest”.
But time has moved on in other ways at Whirinaki. Not all of the old tracks are reverting to their Gondwa­nan origins. Some are being devel­oped for decidedly comtemporary activities. Like the 16 km mountain-bike track that was opened last year. Notable for its spectacular scenery, it has attracted international attention. Not that it hasn’t had its detractors. John Sutton, DOC’s area manager, admits the local Forest & Bird group took a bit of convincing. But now that the track is up and running, most people have come round to the idea. Which is just as well, since DOC is not just committed to mak­ing the forest work in an ecologi­cal sense; but wants it to work in a social sense as well. In the long term that means fostering a sustainable, locally run, eco-tourism industry.
Eco-tourism in Whirinaki? I flinched at the thought. Up until then I had been relishing the solitude of the forest; the idea of sharing Whirinaki with energetic mountain-bikers and busloads of Japanese tourists filled me with dread.
Therein lies the dilemma for Whirinaki, as it does for many parks in many corners of the world. How do you “save” natural areas and at the same time share them? Or to put it another way, how do you spread the benefits of ecological success to the society that supports it? These were the questions I still needed answers for at Whirinaki and, as I suspected, the social scars of the past were proving a lot harder to heal than the environmental ones.
Minginui, the former logging town at Whirinaki, tells the story. Flanked by the mighty trees of Whirinaki on three sides, it is a town inextricably linked to the forest. Yet, like a broken street lamp, its connections seem severed. The streets are silent and empty; the general store is boarded up. To an outsider like me, it was as if no one lived there any more.
But they do. There are about 250 residents still living in Minginui. Most have iwi ties with Ngati Whare or Ngati Manawa. Their ancestral connections to the forest go back hundreds of years. These are some of the locals who are awaiting the promised fruits of eco-tourism.
John Sutton, and others I spoke to at DOC, are all too aware of their plight. DOC has statutory obliga­tions to form partnerships with the community and with iwi. Building a sustainable eco-tourist industry is part of that commitment. “But it will take time,” says Sutton.
It’s a tricky balance. It is hard to imagine Whirinaki becoming a Yel­lowstone National Park overnight, but there is surely great potential in the place, especially if DOC continues to be successful in improving the biodi­versity. Small town economics can be a dismal business at the best of times. But conservationists’ claims that the township of Minginui has a great asset on its doorstep are not mere rhetoric. Perhaps, like a good wine, they are just taking time to mature.
Despite the ongoing challenges, I felt heartened by what I’d seen at Whirinaki. Much has been achieved for the forest in the last 20 years. From a biological perspective Whirinaki was in better shape than I expected, much better shape. The ecological restoration would contin­ue, and I look forward to the possibil­ity that before too long the sound of birds like the kokako might be heard again in the forests of Whirinaki, and, in time, the sound of people talking and laughing would be heard, too.

Kairara: one blink and you will miss it. It’s nothing more than a few farms scattered at the base of Tutamoe Mountain, about 20 km north of Dargaville. Not a tourist in sight on the day I passed through—or on any other day for that matter. Kairara is, for want of a better word, obscure. But behind this out-of-the-way settle­ment lies a secret from the past—a secret that I had long wanted to dis­cover for myself.
However, “wanting” and “doing” can be two entirely different matters, and I pondered this fact as I wound my way through the dusty roads to the base of Tutamoe Mountain in late March. Was my quest inspira­tional, or just plain foolishness? The closer I got to my destination, the more it seemed like the latter.
Not that I hadn’t planned things. Before setting out I had enlisted help, the best help. Renowned conserva­tionist, Stephen King, and local kau­matua, Davis Paniora (Te Roroa), had agreed to be my guides for the day. If anybody could track down the secret of Kairara, surely they could. But did I really know what I was looking for?
If the mountain had any answers that day, it wasn’t giving them away. Though bathed in warm sunshine, Tutamoe’s rugged flanks looked dark and forbidding. Only the occasional lone kauri dotted through the pad­docks offered any clues of the pur­pose of our visit.
At the bottom of Tutamoe the grasslands were abruptly replaced by forest. Not kauri, however, as you might expect, but pine. Here, as elsewhere in New Zealand, it is a familiar story: native forest logged or burned, and replaced by the “mira­cle timber tree”, Pinus radiata.
We got out of our vehicles and proceeded on foot. I felt oddly cheerful. Beneath the pines the light was soft. Thick layers of pine nee­dles, which had suppressed most of the undergrowth, made for easy walking. We talked as we trekked upwards, ruminating on the past and its legacy: the kauri bonanza of the 19th century, the logging, the gum-collecting and, most shock­ingly of all, the burnings. In the late 19th century the drive to clear land for new farms reached a crescendo in New Zealand and the match was quicker than the axe. Summer after summer the settlers’ fires raged, and vast stands of kauri (and other valu­able timber trees) simply went up in smoke.
In a few short decades the kauri forests were decimated. No one knows exactly how much kauri was lost, but the forests that survive today are mere fragments of what existed. Mature, large kauri are espe­cially rare; incredibly, they are to be found over only 1 per cent of their pre-human area.
Tutamoe had once been home to large kauri. Even at the end of a dry summer, the slopes were cool and damp. It seemed difficult to believe that indiscriminate fires had raged here, too.
Then, just ahead, we saw the proof: blackened stumps. They were kauri, unmistakably. Massive stumps dotted between the pine trees like ancient gravestones. Sud­denly, the pines seemed like very poor substitutes.
Further on, there was more proof. Rising above us, like apparitions, were the ghostly trunks of large kau­ri. The charred remnants of the trees rose upwards—six, eight, even ten metres, and then stopped. In the dim half-light of the forests they seemed unreal. Frozen in time, their trunks burnt hollow, unchanged for over 100 years except for the mosses that covered them.
Our mood was sombre as we passed by these cremated ruins. I had seen for myself the sad truth: that the slopes of Tutamoe Mountain had once been full of kauri—giant kauri. Yet even as I reflected on their demise, I pondered on their beginnings. I put the question to King: why did kauri grow to such massive proportions on Tutamoe? Was it luck? Was it genetics? Or were there other factors?
According to King there are various theories, of which genetics certainly plays a part. But on Tuta­moe there were probably two main factors. The first is the soil. Tutamoe is composed primarily of soft sedi­mentary soils, which enable kauri to establish deep roots and gain good access to summer moisture. Basalt rocks also abound on the slopes of Tutamoe. Originally from the ancient Waipoua volcano, the rocks are rich in minerals which, over the course of time, add fertility to the soil. Almost all the really large kauri today are found on sites with deep, relatively fertile soils.
The other important factor relates to the kauri’s longevity. Of all the 15 kauri species found in the Pacific, the New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) is not only the largest, it is by far the longest living. Extreme longevity, however, poses certain challenges. It means that a tree must be able to survive catastrophic natu­ral disturbances such as floods, fires, landslides and extreme winds. Ecolo­gists now know that natural distur­bances have been a major influence in vegetative patterns and processes in New Zealand’s pre-human history. Only kauri that were lucky enough to avoid these natural disasters could reach great size and age.
Good luck for a kauri often meant a good location. And Tutamoe Mountain, as it happens, had good soil and good location for long-liv­ing kauri. For a start, the bulk of the Tutamoe Range provides good protection to its southern side from cyclonic events that periodically bat­ter the northern North Island. Nei­ther was the mountain at risk from flooding. Even more significantly, Tutamoe’s cool, moist slopes would have offered natural protection from fires and drought, the latter being a primary limiting factor for tree size and longevity. Thus, blessed with a favourable location, some kauri were able to grow undisturbed for thou­sands of years.
Thousands of years? Remarkable, but true. Worldwide there are few trees with lifespan measured in thou­sands of years, but the kauri is one of them. Only 20 km north of Tuta­moe stands Tane Mahuta, the largest living tree in New Zealand. Its age is estimated to be at least 2000 years; nearby, Te Matua Ngahere is thought to be about 3000 years old. And there were others that lived even longer...
Proceeding up the south-eastern flanks of Tutamoe Mountain we left the pines and entered regenerating native forest. Here the undergrowth was thick. Suddenly, walking be­came difficult. The forest seemed to close in around us, and although I was relishing the native bush, I felt my spirits beginning to flag. Perhaps the last part of our journey would be too difficult.
There was a clearing ahead of us, a chance to stop and reassess our situation. Maybe cut our losses and head back. I glanced ahead to King. He had stopped on the edge of the clearing and was smiling back at me. I felt momentarily puzzled, but as I drew nearer, King nodded. My pulse quickened. Was this really it? Was this the tree?
I looked upwards, upwards...And there, towering above me was...noth­ing. There was no tree. Only empty sky—and the memory of something that had existed.
But I imagined the tree. I imagined it above me, filling the sky. “Kairaru” they called it: the largest kauri ever officially measured in New Zealand. It was big, so big that when Percy Smith first discovered it in the late 19th century, he mistook the trunk for the side of a cliff. Which is not surprising when you consider how big it actually was. In height and girth it was almost half as big again as the legendary Tane Mahuta. Even more incredibly, its timber volume is esti­mated to have been triple that of our largest living kauri.
But not any more, for Kairaru, like so many of our kauri giants, is but a distant memory. For 4000 years or so, it grew safely on the slopes of Tutamoe. It pre-dated the early civi­lisations—the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans—and outlived them by more than 1000 years. By the time Maori first arrived in Aotearoa, it was a giant. And so it kept grow­ing, slowly, as the centuries rolled by ...until one day, in the smoke-filled summer of 1891, it fell victim to a careless fire.
The loss of Kairaru hung heav­ily over me that day. It seemed as senseless and wanton as the sacking of Persepolis. Yet standing in the place where Kairaru was once rooted gave me strength, too. Like past civilisations, a mighty tree can have a great power, even in memory. That strange power, fuelled by the memory of something both ancient and wondrous, is perhaps the great­est legacy of Kairaru.
I had discovered for myself that there is more to a tree than meets the eye. And it was fi tting, I thought, as I paid tribute to our greatest invisible tree, that I should be standing shoulder to shoulder with King and Paniora. They understand the ancient power of the kauri. And their work, for the Waipoua Forest Trust,is all about protecting and restoring the kauri forests for the new millennium. One day, perhaps, there will be a new Kairaru.

Wenderholm from the Swedish for “winter home”. Sandwiched be­tween the Puhoi and Waiwera Riv­ers, 48 km north of downtown Auck­land, the park that bears the name ought to be a mite warmer than Stockholm in January. Even so, the London plane trees (Platanus x aceri­folia) at the entranceway were telling me loudly that it was autumn. As I stood beneath them in the morning light, their large leaves clattered to the ground. These trees were planted by Robert Graham, who purchased the Mahurangi Block in the 1840s and gave the place its name. Even in those days it must have seemed like the perfect retreat. For Maori it had been a favourite fishing spot, notably for sharks and rays, yet there was little permanent settlement.

Auckland's Queen Street, the coun­try's most iconic retail thorough­fare—a ribbon of asphalt surrounded by jostling high-rises—is not a place one associates with trees. But they're there just the same. South of the town hall, just below the street, is a gentle gully, and it's full of trees.
Myers Park—little more than three hectares in size and encircled by tall buildings—is sometimes referred to as the forgotten park. But it's a spot worth remembering because it isn't only full of trees, it's full of history.
The story begins nearly a hun­dred years ago, when today's leafy gully was nothing but a festering pit of rubbish tips and slum shanties. Money, and the vision of something better, transformed the place. The money came courtesy of business­man and politician Arthur Myers, who purchased the land in 1913 and gifted it to the city as a park.
Myers also had vision—but so did others. The notion of city parks as the embodiment of civic virtue was at the heart of a powerful movement at the time. "City Beautiful" was a worldwide phenomenon. Parks were seen as providing opportunities for citizens to improve their physical health, aesthetic sense and moral values. It was an idea that captured the imagination of many civic lead­ers of the time—and, luckily for Auckland, Myers was one of them.
Parks also had an educational connection. It was a time of building playgrounds, and Myers paid for the construction of one in the park, as well as a nearby kindergarten that still bears his name.
As I wandered through the park looking at mature trees—swamp cypresses (Taxodium distichum); Australian red cedars (Toona austra­lis); Morton Bay figs (Ficus macro­phylla)—I tried to imagine a wealthy figure of today making a similar endowment. Somehow it seemed unlikely. Did that mean that people were more public-spirited back then? Or had the altruism of yesteryear merely taken another guise these days? The trees at Myers Park had nothing to say on the subject, but they did speak of another time. The formal avenues of palms—Canary Island (Phoenix canariensis) and cot­ton (Washingtonia filifera)—seemed oddly comforting. Standing in their long shadows I fancied I could al­most hear a brass band playing God Save the King—but the tune was so distant I didn't know which king they were saving.
Other trees caught my eye: a white pine from Japan (Pinus parvi­flora); an ombu from the Americas (Phytolacca dioica); an Asiatic coral flame tree (Erythrina sykesii); an At­lantic cedar (Cedrus atlantica). These were specimens from an era of wide botanical horizons; when curiosities from abroad were avidly collected; when a stroll in the park meant a geography and history lesson rolled into one.
Natives, of course, were almost absent. They must have seemed all too ordinary in those days. But I was pleased to note a couple of size­able puriri (Vitex lucens) growing amongst the international celebrities. They looked lush and vaguely tropi­cal—like their teak counterparts. Perhaps they'd been mistaken for exotics.
Even more absent were the elms (Ulmus x hollandica). Once there had been 12 of them. They'd stood, lofty and majestic, in the north-east­ern corner of the park. Notable in life, they became even more nota­ble in death—but for all the wrong reasons. In 1989, these unfortunates were the first trees in New Zealand to succumb to the deadly Dutch elm disease. Caused by a pathogenic fungus (Ceratocystis ulmi), this has wreaked havoc in many parts of the Northern hemisphere, including Britain, France and North America. It is carried by a couple of species of elm bark beetle, one of which (Scolytus multistriatus) has become established here. Yet, so far, the disease has been confined to a few isolated pockets of Auckland, and there is hope that it will eventually be eradicated.
Like the trees, the buildings around the park have grown over the years. There are a lot of them now—office blocks, apartments, hotels—and each new edifice seems twice the height of the one it has re­placed. They tower over everything; even the lanky cotton palms look insignificant beside them.
People were less conspicuous. The once resplendent Myers Park kindergarten has closed. A small congregation of youths gathered by a disused fountain; I discreetly kept my distance. More striking were a couple of regulars. One of them had clearly taken up residence inside the hollowed-out trunk of an ombu tree. He looked elderly and well used to living rough. It seemed churlish to deny him some much-needed shel­ter, yet somehow I had the feeling this wasn't quite what Arthur Myers and his friends had envisaged, back in the days when there was a king on the English throne.
But utopias are like that: they seldom turn out the way they were intended. And despite the obvious encroachments of modern life, Myers Park still offers plenty of charm for tree-lovers like me. The swamp cypresses are some of the largest you'll find in New Zealand. Then there's the delight in finding a monkey hand tree (Chiranthode­ndron pentadactylon). So named because of the hand-like appendages to its flowers, the monkey hand tree is relatively rare in New Zealand. In Mexico, where it grows naturally, it's attributed with magical pow­ers—and I must say I felt somewhat spellbound when I first noticed it.
Rare, too, are the Australian red cedars. This rather graceful tree isn't really a cedar at all—in fact it's not even a conifer—but its cedar like timber has made it prized by loggers. Not so long ago it grew commonly in the coastal regions of south-east Australia. Now it exists only in iso­lated pockets—and, thankfully, in Myers Park.
The day was getting on—and I had a lot to be thankful about. I had the feeling that my expedition to Myers Park had fulfilled its mission. The trees had spoken to me—and something of the spirit of the past had touched me. I rubbed my fingers affectionately down the bark of the Japanese white pine and watched the children from a nearby school stream into the park.
Trees and the laughter of children: it was a nice combination.

In 1968 The New Zealand Sea Shore by John Morton and Michael Miller was published, and it quickly became the cornerstone of marine biology in this country. In September 2004 a successor to that volume—Seashore Ecology of New Zealand and the Pacific, by John Morton, is being released. To mark the occasion, we offer a brief sketch of Morton, a man who has made a difference in an unusual range of fields.